Harvard students had less contact with Radcliffe women in those days, due in part to the strictly enforced parietal rules, which allowed women in men's dorms only during certain hours.

"They were a very profound concern of the College's administration." Goldman recalls of the rules. "I don't think they were broken too frivolously."

Rintels remembers one Lowell House classmate "whose girlfriend lived with him--if you didn't flaunt it, it was okay."

But, says Auchincloss, "There weren't hell of a lot of women crawling through windows "Hawkins agrees. "It was much more special to call up a Radcliffe woman for a date then than it must be now."

Perry Smith also spent a lot of time writing, but he too found time for non-literary events at the Lampoon Spooner, also a Lampoon alumnus, recalls that during Phool's Week, the organization's initiation period. Smith "dressed a Phool up as Santa Claus and had other Phools attack him in downtown Boston."

Passersby were so distressed by the sight that they soon came to Santa's aid and joined an increasingly unwieldy melee. "We were quickly bailed out of jail." Spooner says.

In addition, the Lampoon, as Smith remembers, was the only organization at that time that had an open, free bar "I dare say," he adds, "that a lot of destroyed livers can be traced to that."

The social life of Harvard in the late '50s receives mixed reports from these former classmates. Yale's Professor Brooks, a member of the Fly Club, recalls that there was a "tremendous amount of drinking. Not to get drunk, but it seemed that there was a cocktail party every night of the week during the Spring, somewhat reminiscent of Brideshead Revisited." Yale, he says, is, "on the whole grubbier and lacking in that certain elegance and anglophilia that Harvard's always maintained."

Members of Harvard's exclusive final clubs probably experienced such elegance more frequently than non-members. But both alike say the final clubs exerted, at most, a minimal force on campus. Auchincloss, a member of the Spee, says the clubs were set off from the rest of campus life "because people who weren't in them didn't give a shit. The feeling was take them or leave them. I don't think they were hotbeds of racism of anti-Semitism. They were oases of preppiness.

Kopit says, "it was a bit harder for someone who was Jewish to get into the Pudding. I think there was some kind of bias, but not a strong one."

"I wasn't interested in, nor did I have the money to be in a final club," Watkins says. "As a Black, it was difficult for me in a number of ways, but not bad. I didn't have any terrible experiences. The world beyond Harvard was more conscious of my skin color than Harvard was," he concludes.

At least one member of the class of '59 recalls an unwelcome exclusivity. "I had no money and no car," says Frederick Davis, now a psychoanalyst in Washington. "It was quite intimidating. My House master was quite haughty."

One graduate notes the disturbing underside of the pervasive freedom on campus then. "Harvard assumed you were ready for freedom, whether or not you were," says Rintel, whose works include Clarence Darrow on Broadway, and the television screenplay of Gideon's Trumpet. "Harvard says, in effect, 'you do whatever you want while you're here.' And I did. I played poker every night and didn't go to class nearly enough. I drifted Advice was there only if you actively looked for it. It's easy to slip through the crack," he says. Finally after his freshman year. Rintels took time off.

"When I returned, I was a much better poker player," he says.

A handful of serious causes also inspired students in the 50s. In 1958, after a feature on religion ran in The Crimson, a controversy arose over who could and could not be married in Memorial Church. The church's minister, George Buttrick. The Crimson reported, wanted the church reserved for Christian ceremonies. As Nelson remembers, Crimson editors didn't realize the provocative nature of Buttrick's views, which were buried in the article. Soon afterwards, the Crimson published a letter objecting to Buttrick's views, and then one supporting the chaplain. The second letter came from then-President Nathan Pusey '28, who wrote. "Harvard's historic tradition has been a Christian tradition."